By
now most of us have heard of the death of an American icon,
Dick Clark.Clark
had suffered a stroke in 2004 from which he never fully
recovered but a heart attack was what finally took his
life this past week.Clark
was 80 years old.

Maybe
none of us can fully understand the profound effect this
man had on more than one generation of Americans, beginning
in the 1950s.The
facts are readily available in the newspapers and on the
internet.The
local paper refers to Clark as “the youthful-looking TV
personality who introduced rock ‘n’ roll to much of the
nation on American
Bandstand and for four decades was the first and last
voice many Americans heard each year with his New Year’s
Eve countdowns” (Fort
Worth Star-Telegram, April 19, 2012, written by Geoff
Boucher of Los Angeles
Times).

Called “America’s
oldest teenager” because of his perpetual youthful looks
and his interest in youth culture and music, Dick Clark
had a deep influence on millions of teenagers and those
who were older.The
newspaper went on to explain: “With the exception of Elvis
Presley, Mr. Clark was considered by many to be the person
most responsible for the bonfire spread of rock ‘n’ roll
across the country in the late 1950s.”

Some
have looked back with amazement at how the simple tunes
of the 1940s and early 1950s could have degenerated to
the extent that an Elvis Presley and other Rock performers
could have been accepted by vast numbers of young people,
beginning in the later 1950s.Clark
was a leading cause of this deterioration of music.The
decadence of the following decades in the United States
can be attributed to Clark along with countless others.

Clark’s
daily TV program, called “American Bandstand,” “gave fans
a way to hear and see rock’s emerging idols in a way that
radio and magazines could not.It
made Mr. Clark a household name and gave him the foundation
for a shrewdly pursued broadcasting career that made him
wealthy, powerful and present in American TV for half a
century.”By
1958, his 1 ½ hour program was seen and heard nationwide
and was the first to be “devoted to teenagers, their music
and their fashions.By
the end of 1958, it was a full-fledged sensation with 49
million viewers tuning in to ABC to learn about the newest
dance step, rock star or fashion style” (Ibid.).

How
did this personality change music so fully?The Star-Telegram explains: “He helped transform rock ‘n’ roll into a
cultural force, and in the beginning he did it by introducing
artists such as Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets,
James Brown, Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers.All
made their national TV debuts on Bandstand.”

The
emerging music was radically different from what preceded
it.How different
from the singing style of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and
others.The
report states: “The first record on the premiere show
was the then-shocking single Whole
Lotta Shakin’ Going On by a ribald Jerry Lee Lewis.”“Ribald” is
defined as “vulgar or indecent in speech, language, etc;
coarsely mocking.”Jerry
Lee Lewis led to Elvis Presley, and Elvis eventually
led to the rampant vulgar “music” (to use the term broadly)
of the 1970s, 1980s, up to the present time.

American Bandstand, which ran from 1958 until 1989, led to many other music shows.MTV
owes the Bandstand much by way of introducing music to a nationwide audience.In
1981, Michael Usian wrote Dick
Clark’s The First 25 Years of Rock & Roll.He
said that Bandstand gathered
up “the dances and regional sounds of the country and [presented]
them to teens ‘on a silver platter that helped turn rock ‘n’ roll
into one national thing, as we think of today’” (Star-Telegram).

Both
the Bandstand and
Dick Clark personally had a powerful effect on the 1950s
and 1960s generation as well as those young people in the
following decades.“Dick
Cark was a primary force in legitimizing rock ‘n’ roll.
. . . He was able to use his unparalleled communication
skills to present it in a way that it was palatable to
parents and the establishment” (quoted in the Star-Telegram).

Clark
made such an impact on American music that he was inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Wise
and mature Christians will agree that a great degeneration
or deterioration occurred in American music.We
are not suggesting that the music of the 1940s or even
the 1920s or earlier was holy. Not by any means.Believers
found much that was objectionable in the popular music
of those days.However,
the style of music took a dramatic plunge to degeneracy
beginning in the 1950s. The sexual revolution of the 1960s
further corrupted music (think of Woodstock!).

The
1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s saw an unprecedented decay
of the moral quality of secular music.We
are not suggesting that “rock ‘n’ roll” music is alone
to blame for other forms of music have also served to corrupt
young people for the past fifty years—such as Country
music, Rap music, and much more. And other influences
contributed
to the immoral spiral of the country (especially movies,
TV, and the computer).

At
the same time, the past fifty years have brought an amazing
decay of so-called “Christian” music as well.If
one turns on almost any “Christian” radio station, he will
need to listen to religious music that has been influenced
by the degenerate secular tastes of a neo-pagan culture.The
professing (emphasis on professing) “Christian” performers
and listeners must have been influenced by the evils of
secular music and this was transferred to the decay of
religious as well.(Compare
the so-called Christian music of the 1940s to the music
today.)

Sadly,
the late Dick Clark surely was used by Satan to corrupt
Baby Boom generation and every other generation of young
people since.Paul
the apostle says that we are to put on “the full armor
of God” so that we will be able to “stand firm against
the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11).The
apostle also said that we should be aware that Satan could
take an “advantage” of us, but “we are not ignorant of
his schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11).The
term “schemes” here would refer to Satan’s evil “plans
and purposes” (A. T. Robertson, Word
Pictures).The
term nous can
mean “purpose, in a bad sense design, plot” (Ralph Earle, Word
Meanings, quoting Arndt and Gingrich Lexicon).

Surely
Satan uses his subtle design or plot to destroy the morals
of young people through “rock ‘n’ roll” music!His “plan
and purpose” was to corrupt the vast majority of young
people in that generation and in every generation since
the 1950s. Satan has used this music (we should say “noise”)
to lead teens and twenties and even those who now are in
their seventies away from a solid moral foundation.We
know that education, entertainment, TV, and other means
where used by the devil, but surely he used the music as
a primary tool in his evil but effective means of destruction.Teens
listen to vast numbers of hours of music each week and
virtually all of it is tainted with evil.

While
Dick Clark may have been used by the enemy of our soul
to lead his generation downward to destruction (and this
is reflected in the thought patterns and views of the American
public as old as the seventies), we all are responsible
to make wise and moral decisions on the kind of music that
will influence our own mind and heart.Paul
exhorts, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever
is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever
is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything
worthy of praise, dwell on these things” (Philippians 4:8).If
we follow his counsel, we will guard our heart and ears
from the degenerate music of our day.

Now
is the time for true Christians to heed Paul’s command, “Do
not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will
of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans
12:2). Let’s not follow the path of Dick Clark or any other
entertainer. Let us pursue the path of righteousness!